


Free Your Soul, Pay The Toll

by Rowantreeisme



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Horcrux AU, Infinity Gems, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Iron Man 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 02:05:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10821483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rowantreeisme/pseuds/Rowantreeisme
Summary: The price of killing a loved one is a Horcrux, an object filled with half a soul. They are not the road to immortality, and they are not a gift. Tony Stark has three.





	1. Chapter 1

Tony Stark has three Horcruxes, made from pain, and guilt, and desert sands. He’s never wanted them, but it is law. The price of killing someone you care for.  
The first is obvious. Yinsen dies, and it was his fault, not his finger on the trigger although it might as well have been.  
Yinsen dies to save him, and his soul splits, separated like his chest had been under Yinsen’s knife. _Don't waste your life, Stark. And more importantly, don't waste mine._  
It's an unwanted gift, and it lodges itself in the arc reactor, blood and sweat and tears keeping him alive. There's a reason palladium didn't kill him.

  
The second is Stane. It's his own hand that killed him, and it would be a lie to say Tony didn't care for him, like a father, like a friend.  
It's not a gift this time, but a curse spat out on a dying breath. His soul tears in half, torn like the reactor out of him, and it invades the armour, heavier than the iron that’s its namesake. He wonders if Stane would've gained a Horcrux, for killing him. Would it be worse, or better to be cared for by your murderer?

  
The third and last is JARVIS. His creation, his child, dead by his hand. He barely notices his soul tearing in half, gently, like an apology, over the grief and guilt at his loss.  
It settles in his pacemaker, under his fake sternum, keeping his heart on time, like JARVIS always had. The only thing that lets him sleep is that if JARVIS could spawn a Horcrux, then he must have had a soul.

* * *

 

They're broken, one by one, as Horcruxes always are. Only fools believe that you can gain immortality from them.

  
The first is the armour, destroyed with the legion, for Pepper. Of course, he’d give his soul for her, and with the fireworks in the night sky, a piece of him is finally free.

  
The second is the arc reactor, changed and re-made from the one he carried home in his chest, but never replaced, and never destroyed.  
Rogers slams the shield into it, cracking it down the centre, and the largest piece of his soul with it.He wonders if Rogers knew about the Horcrux. If it's worse if he had. If he left him for dead, to freeze and die, or just to freeze, like he had. Horcruxes never guaranteed invulnerability.

  
He holds the gauntlet, with its stones of power, and thinks _I could fix this_. Wielding it has killed him, and the only reason he still stands is the last Horcrux, JARVIS’s death keeping him alive.  
He fixes the world, puts it back to rights, but the power contained in the stones has never been free.  
A trade, a toll, a bargain.  
He accepts, makes the deal and pays his debt, and he smiles because his life is a small price to pay, and at last, he’s whole again.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James Barnes in the Horcrux AU.

The man who used to be James Barnes has many Horcruxes, too many to count, too many for him to remember. 

There is a reason HYDRA never wiped him fully. There is a reason there’s still part of his left. Every time they wiped him, every time they remade him into something worse, they left the part that cared. 

Too many of his victims were former friends, former loved ones, former soldiers. He still cares, even as he watches them die in his mind’s eye, over and over and over. His penance. 

His Horcruxes are scattered around the world, bullet shells and rusty knives and weapons, each containing a torn off piece of his soul. Only fools think Horcruxes will gain you eternal life. Like HYDRA, like Smidt. 

The man who used to be James Barnes wakes up. He  _ remembers _ . Steve Rogers takes him home, side by side, like always, footsteps and shadows and ghosts following in his wake. 

Tony Stark shoots his arm off in Siberia, and all he can think is  _ thank you  _ and _ I'm sorry _ .  _ I’m so sorry _ .

The man who used to be James Barnes leaves. He remembers enough. Enough to go hunting for the scattered parts of him. Enough to piece his soul back together one shard at a time, until there’s only one missing piece left. 

Until there’s only him left, barely a shard of his former self. Steve Rogers still sees the man who fell. He is not that man anymore. 

But still, he follows. A shadow in his footsteps. Into battle and into war.

Thanos comes, and the man who used to be James Barnes, who used to be the Winter Soldier, still follows. Still fights, even if his odds are slim to none.

A man with a gun and a metal arm is no match for reality-warping powers. Still, he fights. 

The man who used to be James Barnes has no Horcruxes. Not anymore.

The final shard is free, and James Barnes is whole. 


End file.
